We use a simple graphical approach to represent Social Welfare Functions that satisfy Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives and Anonymity. This approach allows us to provide simple and illustrative proofs of May's Theorem, of variants of classic impossibility results, and of a recent result on the robustness of Majority Rule due to Maskin (1995). In each case, geometry provides new insights on the working and interplay of the axioms, and suggests new results including a new characterization of the entire class of Majority Rule SWFs, a strengthening of May's Theorem, and a new version of Maskin's Theorem.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Technical Working Papers with number
0268.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 2001 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberte:0268
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H0 - Public Economics - - General D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
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